Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.

They Were Clerics: Clerics who were well known for another role.

This thread is like several other recent ones, notably the "They were lawyers" and the "They were soldiers"
threads, in that they'll be updated over time and are far from
complete. But, I thought it might be interesting to note people who are
or were clerics, but who are known for some other role.

This
one, I fear, might be a bit controversial as people are a bit
predisposed to make some assumptions about anyone who is listed here.
They really ought not to. These individuals are just that, individuals.
They may be emblematic of their faiths, or they may be bad examples of
it. A person can't assume that just because they are listed here that
some sweeping assumption can be made about that particular religion. For
example, just because General Polk was a slave owning Confederate who
was also the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana doesn't mean anything about
the Episcopal Church at all, really, in and of itself.

Nor does listing here amount to approval of anyone person. It's just a list.

Bondevik was Norway's longest running non Labor post World War Two Prime Minister. He is a Lutheran Priest.Category: Lutheran Priest. Politician.__________________________________________________________________________________Ruđer Josip Bošković

18th Century physicist,
astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, who
developed a precursor of atomic theory and made contributions to
astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the
equator of a rotating planet He discovered the absence of atmosphere on
the Moon. He was also a Jesuit priest.

John
Chivington is infamously remembered as the commander of the 1st and 3d
Colorado Cavalry, and the First New Mexico Volunteers at the Sand Creek
Massacre. This 1864 event is remembered as it was an unwarranted attack
on a Cheyenne camp in Colorado that was at peace with the United
States. The attack has long been regarded as wholly unjustified. And,
indeed, Congress investigated the event and said of Chivington:

As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms
to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which
should be the emblem of justice and humanity; holding the important
position of commander of a military district, and therefore having the
honor of the government to that extent in his keeping, he deliberately
planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have
disgraced the verist savage among those who were the victims of
his cruelty. Having full knowledge of their friendly character, having
himself been instrumental to some extent in placing them in their
position of fancied security, he took advantage of their in-apprehension
and defenceless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever
cursed the heart of man. Whatever influence this may have had upon
Colonel Chivington, the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold
blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek, who had
every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United
States authorities.

This
event is so notorious that it overshadows Chivington's earlier
contribution in the Battle of Glorietta Pass, in which his command
decisions were sound.

It
is often noted that Chivington was a Methodist minister, having been
ordained in 1844. He served in a variety of locations prior to the
Civil War, sometimes with controversy due to his abolitionist stance.
He had at one time been sent as part of a mission to Indians in Kansas.
His service to the Methodist church became irregular upon his taking up
military service during the Civil War. He did not return to clerical
duties upon leaving militia service in February 1865.

Copernicus
is legendary as an astronomer, but surprisingly little is known about
his personal life. What is known is that he not only studied astronomy,
but he practiced medicine as a physician. The evidence is fairly
strong that he also became at least a Deacon, or Archdeacon, in the
Catholic Church and that he probably took holy orders, as he was
mentioned as a candidate for an episcopal seat during his lifetime. He
had a degree in Canon Law, while none can be found for medicine, but
that just reflects the degree to which the details of his life are
unknown.

Robert
John Cornell was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from
Wisconsin from 1975 to 1979. Like Father Robert Drinan, he left office
when Pope John Paul II required all Catholic religious to leave public
office.

French
admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu commenced a naval career in 1912.
Following World War One, however, he entered religious study and became
a Discalced Carmelite friar in 1920. He was ordained a Priest
in 1925. In 1939, however, he was recalled to military duty and served
in the French navy again until 1947. He was one of the officers who
went with the Free French from the onset. He is controversially
associated with the start of the French Indochinese War as he recognized
a Cochin Chinese government in contravention to the arrangement agreed
to with Ho Chi Minh in France only slightly before that. He retired
from the Navy in 1947 and reentered religious life.

Robert Drinan was a Roman Catholic
priest who was a member of Congress from 1973 to 1981, at which time
Pope John Paul II required all Catholic religious to step down from
political office. Drinan was also a lawyer and a Georgetown law professor.

Delores Hart was a well known actress of the 1950s who gave that up to become a Benedictine nun.Category: Catholic Nun. Actress.Date Added: January 9, 2016

Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem

The Hospitalliers were one of several military monastic order during the Middle Ages. Starting
off as an organization dedicated to the care of the sick, it occupied a
role analogous to the Knights Templar later on, with that role being
focused on the defense of Christendom in the Middle East. They never,
however, lost their hospital role.

Unlike
the Templars, however, the order still exists today, having survived
the Moslem conquest of the Holy Land and the loss of its later bastion
in Malta, although I am uncertain of the form it presently takes. It is not a monastic order today. Today,
once again, it is dedicated to hospital work.

Hidalgo
issued the famous "Cry of Delores" initiating the first Mexican
rebellion against Spain on September 15, 1810. He was the parish priest
of Delores. Mexico marks the day of the "Cry", which was aimed at bad
government rather than the Spanish monarchy, as its independence day.

House
is legendary as being one of the true kings of the Delta Blues, having
seen his career peak regionally while he was relatively young and then
revive late in his life. But House's first calling was as a minister.
House
began preaching in rural Louisiana near his home when he was only
fifteen years old. later becoming a Baptist minister and then an African
Methodist minister. Married at age 19, he was a dedicated opponent of
the blues which he regarded as evil until fate and circumstances took
him to Clarksdale Mississippi where his views of the Blues changed after
he became friend with legendary Bluesman Charlie Patton. He went on to
be a major regional Bluesman himself and was heavily locally
influential in the Delta Blues before leaving for Rochester New York
while in his early 40s to take a job as a railroad porter, whereupon he
abandoned his musical career. Rediscovered in the early 1960s, he
reentered music at that time. Even then, however, his early career
showed with one of his famous tracts being John The Revalator.

Social critic Jesse Jackson is a Baptist minister.Category: Baptist minister. Social critic.Date Added: May 17, 2014___________________________________________________________________________________

Athanasius Kircher

17th Century polymath who wrote on just about everything, including geology, medicine
and languages. He discovered the connection between the Coptic
languages and ancient Egpytian. He was a Jesuit priest.

This
17th Century scientist is regarded as the father of aeronautics because
of his early pioneering work in this field. He was also a Jesuit
priest.Category: Catholic Priest. Scientist.________________________________________________________________________________

Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître

Lemaître
was a physicists who was the first person to propose an expansion of
the universe, the first to propose the "Big Bang" and he was also the
first person to what is now known as Hubble's Law. The brilliant
physicists was also a Belgian Catholic priest.

Prime Minister of Vanautu, he is an Anglican Priest.Category: Anglican Priest. Politician._________________________________________________________________________________Georgy Malenkov

Georgy
Malenkov came of age just in time to participate in the Russian Civil
War and, even though he was from a kulak background and a recent
descendant of a Russian Orthodox Priest, he joined the Red Army. He
entered the Soviet political system thereafter and, over time, came to
rise up high in Stalin's administration. After Stalin's death, he was
Premier of the Soviet Union until pushed out and aside by Khrushchev.

After
his fall from power, Malenkov had a change of heart and became a
Russian Orthodox Lector, which in the Russian Orthodox Church is the
lowest rank of clergy.

Commentator John McLaughlin, widely respected as an intellectual, was at first a Jesuit Priest. Ordained in 1959, McLaughlin ran for Congress without permission of his order in the early 1970s and then became a speech writer, while still a priest, for Richard Nixon thereafter. In the early 1970s he left the priesthood and entered into a career as a political pundit.

Barbara Nicolois is a movie screenwriter who started off early in her life as a nun. She left that vocation when her desires to more aggressively evangelize conflicted with the less aggressive views as to approach by her fellows, and she then went to film school. She's also taught screenwriting and has been active in organizing and supporting Chrisitans in Hollywood.Category: Screenwriter, Professor.Date Added: January 12, 2016.__________________________________________________________________________________

Ian Paisley

Ian Paisley is a controversial politician from Northern Ireland. He is also a Presbyterian minister.Category: Presbyterian minister. Politician.__________________________________________________________________________________

Damaskinos Papandreou

Papandreou
was the regent of Greece following World War Two until the king could
return. He was also a Greek Orthodox Archbishop.

Little
Richard is famous as an earlier and flamboyant rock and roller, who
also lead a very wild life. In spite of that, however, by the late
1950s Penniman was convinced that he had a call to the ministry, and he
abandoned his musical career for the cloth, becoming a protestant
minister.

Penniman, whose personal life has
occasionally been controversial, has gone in and out of ministry since
that time, and has probably been a part time minister and full time
musician more often than not. In recent interviews, however, he's
sounded much more like a minister than musician.

Polk
is famously remembered as as Confederate general who killed in action
in June, 1864, in Georgia. But, prior to the war, he was the Episcopal
Bishop of Louisiana. Indeed, he was the first Episcopal Bishop of
Louisiana. Polk pulled the Episcopal Church in Louisiana out of
the American church, but he did not hope for war. Still, coming from a
successful Southern slave owning farming family and owning many slaves
himself, his eventual commission in the Confederate Army was perhaps
inevitable.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (the Knights Templar)
This may seem like an odd entry, as people tend to think of the Knights
Templar as Crusading Knights, or perhaps as characters out fanicful
conspiracty movies, but in fact the Templars were a monastic order.

Founded
to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, much of what is
commonly imagined about the Templars is erroneous. They did not arrive
in the Holy Land as an invading army, but rather as a protective escort,
and they were not initially numerous. That they were a monasic order
is also commonly not noted, but is part of what made them so effective.

Monique Pressley entered the news as the embattled Bill Cosby's new lawyer. Pressley is also the founder of and figure behind Monique Pressley Ministries.Category: LawyerDate Added: February 5, 2016___________________________________________________________________________________

Fred Rogers

Known as television's "Mister Rogers", Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister.

An odd persistent story that Rogers served heroically in the U.S. military is completely false.

Albert
M. Sawin was the first mathematics professor at the University of
Wyoming, but he was a lawyer prior to that, as well as being a
geologist. After leaving the University of Wyoming, he continued on as a
mathematics professor at various instructions, but also obtained a
divinity degree in later years.

Spallanzani
was a biologist whose worked formed the basis for what was later
accomplished by Pasteur. The 18th Century Italian was also a Catholic
priestCategory: Catholic priest. scientist.________________________________________________________________________________Nicolas Steno

Nicholas Steno was a 17th Century
geologist and astronomer who developed the geologic discipline of
stratigraphy. He was also a Danish Catholic Bishop.

Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem (Teutonic Knights)
Like the Knights Templar, the Teutonic Knights are a poorly understood
group in modern times, as nothing really analogous to them exists today
as they were in their original form. One of the military monastic
orders of the Crusades, the Teutonic Knights were unique in that they
were principally composed of Germans whereas the Hopitalliers and
Templars were not so nationally oriented. While they originally started
off as a Crusading order in the Middle East, their history is also
unique in that they participated in the Northern Crusades against the
pagan people to Germany's east, which the other military orders did not.

The
Teutonic Knights still exist as a Catholic order, like the
Hospitalliers, and also like them they endured a split during the
Reformation so that a Protestant descendant made up of the knighted
still exists. The Catholic order today is made up entirely of Catholic
religious and associates. Their black Maltese Cross symbol became so
strongly identified with Germany that it still is used as the German
army's symbol today.

Tiso
was a Slovakian Catholic Priest who grew up in the Austro Hungarian
Empire. He took Holy Orders just before World War One and was active as
a pro Hungarian journalist during the war. Growing up in an era of
increasing nationalism in the declining empire, he became an ardent
Slovakian after the war and was involved in politics. When the Germans
dismantled Czechoslovakia just before World War Two he became the
president of Slovakia.

Tiso's Slovakian
patriotism was paramount and blinded him to the larger realities of what
was occurring in Europe, particularly in regards to Slovakia falling
into being a German client state. It had little choice in that matter,
but arch Slovakian patriots like Tiso failed to appreciate the degree to
which their Slovakian dreams were co-opted by the German reality. The
oddity of Tiso's position became apparent when the Vatican intervened to
prevent the deportation of Slovakian Jews from the country, which did
in fact halt them.

Tiso remained popular with Slovaks
after the war but was arrested and sentenced to death for treason. He
was executed in 1947, but as recently as 2000 a Slovakian city was
looking towards placing a plaque in commemoration of him in their city.

Wilson is remembered for portraying Lamont Sanfort in the 1970s television series Sanfort and Son, where he played the younger Sanfort along side Redd Foxx. He served in the Army, and was wounded, in Vietnam and became an actor after his service. He acted up until 1982, when a long simmering call to the ministry caused him to abandon being a full time actor to become an ordained Protestant minister, although he still acts a bit.Category: Soldier. Actor. Protestant minister.Dated Added: March 15, 2015__________________________________________________________________________________

John Knox Witherspoon

Witherspoon was a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He
was also a Scottish born Presbyterian minister. He was the only
clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independance. He was also the
president of Princeton, which was a Presbyterian university.

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Lex Anteinternet?

This blog has been around since 2009. In the very first post, we asked the question: "What the heck is this blog about?"

Our answer to the question was: "The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?"

We also noted: "Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book."

All of this is still true, but the focus of the blog has changed somewhat. It now focuses on the era from 1890 to 1920 in general, rather than on the law and lawyers specifically, although that may be far from obvious. It's also become the location where we comment on anything we feel moved to comment on.

We hope you'll feel moved to comment as well. While we moderate every comment, so as to weed out Spam, we greatly appreciate the comments where they are offered, and hope to see more.

On This Day In Wyoming History

In addition to being the frequent blogger here, I'm also the author of On This Day In Wyoming History, a book cataloging the daily history of Wyoming. More on that book can be discovered by following the link.

I'm also the author of a number of articles that have been published by various journals, including The Wyoming Lawyer and Rural Heritage. Topics of my published articles range from legal and agricultural topics to historical topics.